Update #2, covering January and February 2016

Beginning in January, I hired my friend Brian and his big dozer to come and finish clearing this section of my hillside once and for all - remove old tree stumps, thick brush, big boulders & rocks, and when done, burn or bury all the big piles, so that the hill is smooth and ready for us to spread seed. It took him a few weeks of working, waiting for rain or ice to stop, but he got it done, and it looks beautiful. I now how many more acres of pasture for our animals, and it will be shaded during the hot summers.

This was the last time we burned this pile. You can see K6 standing in front of it after getting it lighted and flaming with diesel fuel. Afterward, Brian buried the remains. The original pile was much bigger, and a few weeks before this pic was taken, K8 was the man burning piles, up until the day he fell 5 or 6 feet from the top and landed sideways on a giant boulder, cracking three ribs. He is better now, but was hurting for a few weeks, hence the change in workers. It never gets dull or boring around here. We then spread a lot of seeds on the bare dirt, and many varieties: red clover, white clover, lespedeza, timothy, annual rye, perennial rye, orchard, blue grass, rape, and turnip. The last two because they will attach deer and wild turkey (and the cows and sheep will eat them as well).

It broke my heart when this old giant white oak died a few years ago. I waited this long to make sure it was really dead. It had to be cut down before too many more big branches fell off. This pic shows K6, but it took several of us, spending many hours over the past month, to get it cut, spilt, loaded into trucks and trailers, and delivered to various people & places, but it is finally done. We delivered the last little bit yesterday to a single Mom. I love my gas powered log splitter. I can't imagine going back to swinging an axe or maul to hand split wood anymore. There will be a weeping willow tree planted about where you see the two little logs in lower left of photo.

K7 is first person on left in second row, wearing black t-shirt & ball cap. These are all the missionaries assigned to his Zone. They get time off every Monday, called Preparation Day, to do laundry, buy food at the market, clean their apartments, write letters home, one hour at Church or internet cafe to email family & friends, and sometimes they get a special outing, like this particular day when they travelled to a Park with a waterfall.

K7 said he was lucky (and happy) to do some service for this gentleman, clearing a patch of ground with machetes, because rarely will anyone let him help do manual labor or otherwise be of assistance, not even sweeping a floor.

Our house kit arrived on Tuesday, 16 February, which was a chilly, gray and overcast day threatening to rain. It came on two trucks. 

My buddy Brian was our designated heavy equipment operator, using a big John Deere tractor with forks to unload most of it.

I say most, because not all could be off loaded with the tractor. These pre-built interior walls were hand carried by human fork trucks. K6 is on the right with our neighbor David on the left.

K8's ribs were almost healed, so he helped. Our friend Jayson is the lead builder for this project. He was working with Brian to get trucks unloaded, and the material put in the right spot in the basement or around the building site.

The second truck had the long roof rafters, which took a thinking and planning to figure how to safely unload with a farm tractor.

But Brian got it done, as usual.